818

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings

818.

After one (1!) full week of the legislative session, that is how many bills, resolutions, and memorials have been introduced.

After *one* week.

Guess whoever took the "over" in this year's pool is smiling right now.

Anyway, most of the bills fall into one of four categories.

…Gems of good governance, like Sen. David Schapira's SB1071, banning racial profiling (easily the smallest category, and don't expect any of these to pass)

…Sneaky bad, like Rep. David Stevens' HCR2044, proposing to amend the AZ Constitution so that ballot questions referred there by the legislature would be voted on in primary elections, not general elections (guess they're sick and tired of those pesky independent voters turning aside some of the lege's nuggets of stinkiness, so they're looking to cut the independent voters out of the process)

…Ugly bad, like Rep. Carl Seel's HB2582, mandating that anybody receiving any kind of welfare benefits carry a bright orange card with "Government Assistance Card" or "Government Food Stamp Card" printed in big black letters on it (this one was floated last year, and passed committee, but was amended to remove the petty clauses intended to arbitrarily humiliate poor people)

…Crazy bad, like (this is the biggest category, but I've got to pick one, so let's go with…) Sen. Sylvia Allen's SB1081, declaring an "emergency" and giving county boards of supervisors the authority to hire out the logging of federal forest lands under the guise of "thinning" the growth there

While most observers seem to think that this legislative session will be a short one because it's an election year, it's going to feel absolutely interminable.